


His Beating Heart Upon the Earth

by Nanashi Jones (miaoujones)



Category: Trinity Blood
Genre: Complicated Emotions, Doomed Relationship, Dreams vs. Reality, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-07
Updated: 2006-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-19 05:20:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/pseuds/Nanashi%20Jones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Radu has come to finish him off...</p><p>If Radu has come to finish him off, it means Radu is here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Beating Heart Upon the Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Set at the end of the anime.

Ion awakens abruptly. At first he can sense nothing that would have caused him to come out of sleep: the room is perfectly quiet, perfectly still; even the drapery in front of the open window is motionless, the air itself unmoving. 

Just as it is striking him that this perfection of absence is the very thing that roused him, he sees the silhouette, familiar and impossible. He sits up and blinks, slow and deliberate so that his eyes remain closed for a full second, and when he opens them again the silhouette is still there:

"Radu," he whispers.

"Tovarash." 

As Radu steps deeper into the room, the night whispers after him, pushing the drapes aside as it enters, rushing past Radu where he stands still again; the night is soft and cool as it brushes Ion's skin. "I saw you die."

"You have seen me die before."

Radu speaks true. In spite of this truth, or because of it, Ion has no answer. He seeks Radu's eyes but Radu remains silhouetted and dark.

And then Radu is standing at his bed. Ion doesn't take his gaze from Radu's face even for a blink as Radu sits on the edge. Moon and starlight grace him, and now Ion can see Radu's eyes—but he still can't read them. 

They look at each other for untracked time.

If Radu has come to finish him off...

If Radu has come to finish him off, it means Radu is here.

Ion wants to reach out but he is afraid of what he might find. "Are you really here?" he asks at last, his voice as hushed as his hopes. "Is it—is it really you?" 

Radu smiles and lays a hand on his face, and Ion can feel him, yes, oh~; he dares to close his eyes, surrendering to the touch, stashing it in an eternal moment behind his eyelids. 

Then the moment is not gone but hidden away as Ion opens his eyes, tucks his legs beneath him and kneels up to wrap his arms around Radu's neck. "It's really you, isn't it?" he whispers against Radu's skin.

He feels Radu's breath at his ear, feels Radu's words: "It's me, tovarash." As much as Ion longs for the word, he can't help flinching at it; at the flinch, Radu murmurs his given name but says no more than that.

Ion leans back to look at Radu again, to study him. "Do you hate me?" 

"Never," Radu tells him, his face solemn but gentle, a quiet heat in his voice. "I never hated you, Ion, even when I hated what was happening to our people. Even when hate started to overtake and consume me." Tremors gnaw at the edges of his voice; he steadies himself in Ion's gaze. "It never overtook my heart towards you."

Ion wonders now—as he has been beating his head and heart with vain questions since the moment he saw Dietrich's shade in his friend—what it was that overtook Radu truly, and when. But in this moment, it doesn't seem important to know. In this moment, all that is important is Radu, here, as he is, like this. Ion touches his face, the face of his still most beloved (if no longer only) companion. "I wish I could have taken it away," he says. "I wish I could have sucked out the blackness, the way you sucked the silvered poison from my blood." Radu's eyes go to his shoulder and Ion touches it, not to cover it from Radu's gaze but to hold the gaze to it.

"Maybe," Radu says softly, "you could." 

The night moves around them but they themselves are still; the world spins and they are spun with it in such perfect synchronicity that they cannot feel the spin. The moment is still and spinning, surreal, hyperreal, splitting into transience and eternity, occupying the same space of time.

How, Ion wonders; how do I reach your heart? 

His fingertips flutter against Radu's skin; beneath the skin, something flutters back. Ion doesn't realize until he feels it that he wasn't sure the pulse would be there. His hand falls away as he leans forward to press his mouth to Radu's throat, feeling the thrum of the pulse against his lips. He lets his mouth slide open against Radu's skin and drags his tongue over the pulse point. His naked teeth rest against Radu as he licks at the quickening flutter.

Eyes closed, he seeks Radu in the dark, finds Radu's mouth with his own, whisper of a kiss before he lets himself fall; when his knees touch the floor, he opens his eyes. Seeks again, with his hand this time.

Radu's hand over his stops him. "This isn't what I came here for," Radu says.

Kneeling before him, Ion gazes up. "This isn't what you want?"

Radu holds his gaze silently; then slides away. "This is what I have always wanted."

Ion finally smiles. "Then let me give this to you." He takes Radu out, kisses him again and anew, and begins to suck with tenderness and fluttering. As the sucking grows stronger, though no less tender, Ion feels something being tugged inside him, wending up through his belly, his chest, twirling and twining 'round his own heart, and up, rising through his throat like breath, breath and heartbeat, something in him reaching for the pulse he holds in his mouth.

When Radu pulls him off, that tender striving something in Ion curls up twisting in his belly. But, "come here," Radu breathes, breathless at the same time as he brings Ion up to him, stretches Ion out upon the bed, kisses him, his mouth, their mouths coming together. And coming apart as Radu twists and shifts. And kisses him again, lower; kisses Ion and offers himself to be kissed, and as Ion takes Radu into his mouth once more, he feels himself engulfed in the sweetest heat. 

A thirst Ion never knew he had blazes voraciously through his blood; in sweet desperation to slake it, Ion pours himself into the sucking, lost in the sucking, sucking and being sucked to fullness; he feels himself on the edge of spilling out—and feels a jolt, not pleasure but something just on the other side of it. Realizing what Radu has done, time spun so there's no place for thinking whether to resist or not, Ion sinks his teeth in too. He sucks hard and harder, more, deliriously, blood and come filling his mouth, his throat, spilling and being spilled, spilled and filled...

Ion doesn't realize he is crying until Radu touches his face, smudging the tears. The sun looms just beneath the horizon, advance light reaching ominously over the edge of the earth.

"Will I ever see you again?" Ion asks, even though he already knows the answer; asks, even though he doesn't want to hear the answer.

Radu does not say it. Instead, he smiles: "You'll see the world."

Ion wants to tell him that he isn't going world-walking with Father Abel Nightroad because he wants to but because he is compelled. He wants to tell Radu that he'd rather stay here if only Radu could too. He closes his eyes and wants to tell Radu that he loves him, that he always has; that he doesn't want a world without Radu, that he doesn't want this sunrise, he hates this sun—

But the sun is here, on the other side of his eyelids. The sun is here when he blinks himself open; the sun is here, and Radu is not; the sun is here and so is Ion, his face smudged with tears, their salt on his tongue. He closes his eyes, but still the sun on the other side of them persists, and the world does too, and so too Ion. And Radu does not, but only in Ion's heart. 

And so Ion rises, with and against the sun, his heart beating with memory and blood, to walk his bones upon the earth.


End file.
